


More Than This

by squireofgeekdom



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: AroAce!Obi-Wan, Aromantic, Aromantic Character, Asexual Character, Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-12
Updated: 2016-01-12
Packaged: 2018-05-13 09:44:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5703133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squireofgeekdom/pseuds/squireofgeekdom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"If they think their love is more than this, they know nothing"</p>
<p>AroAce!Obi-Wan's thoughts, through his early years at the Jedi Temple through reuniting with the Force.</p>
            </blockquote>





	More Than This

**Author's Note:**

> From a tumblr prompt spurred by the lack of Ace!Obi-Wan fic in the fandom.

They teach them about sex in their studies at the Jedi Temple, calmly and clinically covering safe sexual practices and the reproductive habits of each species they study as they cover the possible planets a Jedi padawan might visit. The masters speak with drained resignation that their pupils would want to ‘experiment’. 

It’s not that he can’t imagine the appeal - clearly, if sexual reproduction has evolved on so many planets, there must be something worthwhile about it. It’s just he can’t see anyone he’d want to do it _with._ His year mates are often obsessed with stars of the action-packed holovids, smuggled into the temple, stars who so often lose their shirts. They are beautiful, to be sure, but the idea of doing _that_ with them -

Well. He could do without it, even if his year mates seem to struggle with the same restraint.

The conversation about romantic entanglements, he learns by swapping stories with his friends, is one that’s common to all the Master-Padawan duos. Romantic entanglements, he learns, are places to ‘tread cautiously’, perhaps joyful and filled with compassion, but prone to fostering jealousy, possession, obsession, distraction - all things, Yoda tells him separately, perhaps fearful of Qui-Gon’s all too liberal influence - not appropriate for a Jedi, things that can pull one to the dark side. 

It doesn’t ring true to him, not when he feels a sick, bitter feeling in the pit of his stomach when he sees Bant laughing with her friends, without him, or his heart-pounding urge to rush to her side in battle, no matter the risk to himself. His emotions for Bant have never been romantic - he never felt the fire in his chest some describe, or butterflies in his stomach, nothing so irrational. She’s his friend. 

If there would ever have been a time to have romantic feelings, to want to ‘experiment’, it would have been on Mandalore. 

He doesn’t. 

(They kiss, once. There are no explosions, just the damp press of flesh on flesh.)

After leaving - or, more accurately, after waiting for her to ask him to stay - he’s only more sure that the Jedi Order had got this, at least, wrong, for he’s made just as distracted and obsessive by these emotions than by any more romantic ones.

The galaxy’s apparent obsession with romance doesn’t go away, though he’s usually quite safe from it inside the Temple, a fact for which he is grateful. 

(He can’t always escape it though, as Quinlan points out gleefully when he shows him the romantic holovid interpretation of the Battle of Naboo, where the actor playing ‘him’ defeats Darth Maul with his tunic falling away, before sweeping the Queen of Naboo into a kiss.)

A Jedi has no need for such strong emotions, he thinks. If romantic love is truly so much more all-consuming than his platonic feelings, it’s just as well not to be distracted by it. 

(It feels hollow, even then)

He realizes the lie in that two years into training Anakin, as the boy lies in bed in med bay after a mission gone wrong. 

_If they think their love is more than this, they know nothing,_ he thinks, his knuckles white on the metal rim of the bed.

(He has the same thought years later, as he watches his apprentice’s body burn on black sand and walks away.)

…

Years later, though, he can tell Luke that he is not alone. And perhaps that makes it all worth it.


End file.
